Haptic Navigation in the World Wide Web

This paper presents a methodology for mapping a web page onto a 3D virtual reality environment enriched with haptic feedback and an application that has been developed according to the proposed methodology and gives blind people the opportunity to navigate through the internet by touch. According to the proposed haptic navigation in the world wide web, haptic and virtual modalities are combined together in order to enhance user experiences for multiple users: a normal sighted person is able to interact with the virtual reality scene via the visual or/and the auditory or/and the haptic information channel, a blind person is able to interact with the virtual reality scene by hearing and touch, a person having a small visual impairment benefits from the haptic feedback to reinforce the visual channel. The haptic navigation overcomes some of the shortcomings posed by audio rendering of web pages, such as the sequential navigation.